Scarborough Fair and Other Stories by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Read Free Book Online

gone, she’s sick all the time, you know. She depends on her cats to be there when she’s too ill to move and lonely and afraid. She told me so.”
    Mu Mao surprised him by flipping his tail and saying, “That may be, but our kind have problems enough to concern us. Until they come or are brought within our walls, the companions of human beings are not within our protection.”
    â€œYou can’t dislike
people
?” Mustard demanded. “What about Tony and Jeannette?”
    â€œBoth were cats in their last lives, and of our order,” Mu Mao said. “That is how they know to bring others to us. Like myself, they are bodhisattvas, not the ordinary sort of person who abandons a cat who is no longer small and cute, or has become inconvenient. Why should you care? This male and others, like Brother Paddy’s former self, take from you the attention that is rightfully yours. If you return to your Susan and find the others all dead, should you not rejoice? Surely you will not make the same error twice and die again of the same poison? With no competition, your Susan will love you and only you.”
    Mustard didn’t argue. Master indeed! This old cat obviously didn’t understand Susan. Mustard had always hated it that she was always bringing home other cats, true, but he had also licked away her tears for the cats she had to leave at the shelter. He never had to be in a shelter. She had picked him out of his mother’s litter, still in a good home with loving people. He’d always felt entitled to love but he knew from what the others said they had no such hope and getting a home with someone like Susan was a big break for them.
    He hopped in the van before Tony and Jeannette left and rode in back. He desperately wished to be petted, but felt too restless and anxious to lie quietly. They didn’t seem to notice him. They got a call and drove past the turnoff for their clinic back along the route he recognized from his own visits to the vet. He thought maybe old Mu Mao had asked them to give him a lift, but no, they were stopping at another house, not too far from his own.
    Mustard thought it interesting that they had a phone in their van. He liked Susan’s phones. She sat still to talk and he could usually curl up in her lap for a nap. He was good at doing it and staying so still and relaxed that she didn’t even notice until she hung up.
    He jumped out of the van after Jeannette and trotted the single block to his house. No one was in the yard and he approached the cat flap so confidently that he nearly banged his head on the rectangle of board that barred entrance to or exit from the house. He scratched at the door and meowed until he noticed that Susan’s car was gone as well. Of all the nerve. Here he had taken the trouble to return from the dead and she couldn’t even bother to be home. Just like a person.
    Then, from behind the front door, he heard an answering scratch and a small mew. “Let me out! It’s a pretty day. I don’t want to be in here. Where’s Boston Blackie? I want him to come and play!”
    â€œNow now, young lady, this is no time for tantrums,” Mustard said. “I don’t think Blackie will be coming back but I dreamed of your danger and have returned to save you.”
    He meant to be reassuring but she gave a chirrup that was the kittenish equivalent of a giggle. “Uncle Mustard? Is that you? Where have you been? Do you feel better? Susan said those ashes she sprinkled on the roses were you but they didn’t look like you. Weren’t even orange.”
    â€œStop prattling, child, and let me think. Why is the catflap closed?”
    â€œSusan said so we wouldn’t go outside and get into whatever killed you and Blackie.” Her voice turned plaintive. “Is Blackie
really
gone forever? I don’t like the old girl. She is not nice to me at all and I’m going to scratch her face if she